Equitable pay for employees

It was probably quite surprising to the thousands of state employees who haven't received a raise in years that a Legislative Fiscal Office review for the House Appropriations Committee revealed that some state departments have given them anyway.

Other tactics also have provided higher salaries to state employees without calling them raises.

In tight budgetary times, while state services are being cut, we understand that state employees - like many in the private sector - have been forced to cope with downsizing and have taken on additional duties.

But when the standard is not equally applied - some who are doing more don't get paid more and others do - it's an issue of fairness.

Lawmakers reviewing state agencies' budgets last week expressed concern that the departments of insurance and agriculture are granting 4 percent merit pay raises in their proposed budgets for next year.

But after discussing it awhile, Appropriations Committee members shifted to acknowledging that other state agencies had boosted employee salaries more without calling them merit raises.

The state in the past allowed 4 percent raises for employees with acceptable performance reviews. That practice was discontinued in tight budgetary times.

"We may have been saving the state money by allowing them to give 4 percent raises, instead of them going to undercover ways to give them," Appropriations Chairman Jim Fannin said after reviewing several executive departments' budgets.

Raises were given in several agencies by promoting people, by shifting Civil Service status and inserting general salary increases into budgets, designating them as "differential pay" instead of merit increases.

"What bothers me," he said, "is we're made out to be the villain when we ask to increase efficiency and ask 'Can you find a dollar?' And agencies shake their heads, and then we see pay raises. There's something wrong here, the calculations don't add up.

"I agree that hardworking state employees deserve the raises that are available to them based on efficiencies," Schroder said. "But it's hard to tell the taxpayers of Louisiana that the sky is falling, but we found room to give raises. I work for the people, and what's fair is fair, but it's hard making heads and tails of this."

Lawmakers are right to question what's happening.

When we're cutting higher education and health care to shreds, underfunding public schools and eliminating other state services, the people who receive a paycheck signed by a unit of the state of Louisiana should have equal opportunities to improve their compensation if their jobs are considered to be well done.

Who's to say an employee in the Agriculture Department is more deserving of a raise than a professor in a university who is taking on more students to advise and more classes to teach?

From what the Appropriations Committee has discovered, that financial rewards system is broken.

The editorials in this column represent the opinions of The News-Star's editorial board, composed of President and Publisher David B. Petty, Executive Editor Kathy Spurlock and community representatives Kay Kellogg Katz, Harris Brown and Will Sutton.

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Equitable pay for employees

It was probably quite surprising to the thousands of state employees who haven't received a raise in years that a Legislative Fiscal Office review for the House Appropriations Committee revealed that